Kingdom Hearts III: Ending Sorrows - A Collection
by Melodious-Nocturne3
Summary: A collection of scenes, both already up and as of then unwritten, from my now cancelled story Kingdom Hearts III: Ending Sorrows. Posted in chronological order.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:**

**Disclaimer - Kingdom Hearts and its content does not belong to me. It belongs to Square Enix, Disney, and whoever else holds a claim on it.**

**Credit to seventy2seconds on dA for the cover image.**

**The following events are/will be listed in chronological order unless I say otherwise.**

* * *

A girl wearing a plain white dress and sandals sat on a chair facing a table. The room and its furniture were all white and the walls were covered with rough crayon sketches of several different people and places. The girl was currently working on another drawing, black crayon scribbling in the finishing touches on the sketch pad balanced upon the tabletop. Soon, she finally set the crayon down onto the flat surface with a quiet click.

The drawing simply depicted a boy with spiky blond hair, wearing mainly white clothing and with a piece of armor on his shoulder. He appeared to be fast asleep and was sitting in a large white throne. Silvery white chains extended from the throne base to the white walls surrounding it and traveled up along them until they reached strange symbols with blocky hearts on the top and three spikes jutting out of its base.

"Soon," Naminé murmured with a smile, "all of the connections will be made clear and old sorrows finally ended."

**~ . . . ~**

_- ? -_

_- ? -_

_The darkness... Where did it come from?_

**. . .**

_Darkness rules your heart. It gives me control. Muscle and sinew that once obeyed you now rebels against you. How you can remain here at all confounds the mind._

_It's still my heart. You think you can just come in and take over? I'm not going to sit by and let that happen._

_Hmph. Don't even entertain any notions of escaping me, boy. In the end, your heart will be engulfed by mine forever._

_Wrong. You're going to get shown the door, old man._

_As I recall, you couldn't even handle your own darkness. How then, will you triumph over mine?_

_Well, you'll find out soon enough._

_Oh, so that's how it is, is it? Someone else has set foot into your heart. Eraqus, you sly fox..._

_I'm not afraid of what the darkness holds now. Even if you do wrest control of my heart from me... even if you cast me into the deepest, darkest abyss, you will never sway me from the one cause that pushes me to keep on fighting. Whatever the cost, I'm ready to pay it._

_Brave words, to be sure. But I'm a patient man. We can take all the time we need to settle this little property dispute. However, know this; you are just one of many roads that I might choose to take. Trust me, I made certain of that._

**. . .**

Rusted, golden red armor creaked in protest as a metal gauntlet tightened its grip around a Keyblade embedded blade-first into the earth. As the suit of Keyblade Armor kneeled on the rocky ground as it had for years, it seemed to sense something. The helm tilted upwards and appeared to gaze at the sky.

It sensed change, much of it. The very Kingdom Hearts soon to be teetering on the edge. It knew that afterwards, the worlds would never be the same again. Whether for better or worse, the armor could not say.

And something else. Rejoining. Rebirth. Bits and pieces of a whole about to finally become one - as it should be - and for real this time.

There were many things broken up like this, the Lingering Sentiment knew all too well. And it could sense that each and every one of them would finally be picked up and pieced back together.

The heart. The body. The soul, or the mind.

Things that do not belong by themselves. And now, a trio of them would be the first to rejoin as one.

**. . .**

_Aqua, Ven. Finally, I can set things right._


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:**

**Notice – the following chapter is in the eyes of Terra, who has amnesia. He has just woken up (although there are a couple more scenes before this that I'm not going to post) following the destruction of Xemnas, although it's been... I'd say a month since that destruction. The confinement of his true self for so many years slowed his reformation. And yes, that means – if you hadn't noticed it by now – Xehanort had largely won the "property dispute." And the loss of his memories? Part of the price Terra had to pay for freedom, in a figurative way.**

**If I actually have people reading this, enjoy.**

**(P.S. Vanitas means cussing and inappropriate comments. You have been warned.)**

* * *

The young man walked through a silent, empty valley with steep cliff sides and not a living thing to be seen.

Terra found it almost disturbing. His instincts expected to see something different – in fact, he soon realized that his Keyblade had been out for who knows how long since he had entered this place and gripped in a tight fist. Occasionally, he would flinch for no reason and swing it at empty air. He felt as if simply blinking could sentence him to death.

"You need to calm down, Terra," he muttered to himself.

Eventually, he got past the narrow valley and Terra's muscles relaxed. His mind was still on the alert though, and his eyes continued to search for threats that weren't there. Obviously, he had some bad history here. But Terra hadn't grasped the full idea of it until he began climbing up.

The path was right by a cliff that gradually grew steeper and higher until he could see miles of flat wasteland and sharply rising plateaus, disturbed only by the field of dead Keyblades stabbed into the earth.

Terra had looked across the desolate landscape with a strange sense of apprehension at the beginning, but his paranoia continued to be unfounded.

Soon enough, he glanced at it once and almost casually before turning away. But then his eyes shot right back to the sudden sight of a battlefield, and he froze.

The Keyblade graveyard was gone now, replaced by dozens of their wielders in combat. Many had been cut down and more continued to fall. It was impossible to seen them clearly – they seemed to be cast into shadow despite the huge, glowing, heart-shaped blue moon now hovering in the dark sky. But that wasn't exactly what continued to draw his attention. In the center, there was an empty circle surrounding a small group of clashing warriors, as if the Keyblade wielders on the outskirts had agreed as one to keep their conflict undisturbed.

Terra could see their fight as clearly as unblemished glass. It was almost like his eyes had zoomed in on the scene somehow. He could make out nineteen figures in total, but something was different about their appearance.

Focusing his sight, he saw a kind of halo around each of them. Terra knew instantly that seven of them had halos of white light, while thirteen were encircled by ink-black shadows. These differences seemed to separate them into the opposite sides of the mini-battle raging inside the much larger one. And right in the very middle, there was a huge Keyblade, glowing with radiance underneath a beam of light the moon above shone down upon it.

It was clear that it was being fought over, as any wielder who reached to claim it was dragged away by one from the other side. And this pattern continued to repeat.

All of this lasted for only a few moments, but it could have been hours and Terra wouldn't have known the difference. The vision faded just as the moon began to disappear behind the roiling black clouds and its light faded from the now dimming and cracking Keyblade.

The actual scene spread out before him now reappeared, but Terra's vision wasn't finished with him yet. This time, several translucent figures fought amid the graveyard, escaping his previously inhuman sight. All except one – himself. That distant figure stood on a particularly high plateau, facing away from him.

Terra gaped, but before he could react any more, the vision was immediately replaced by yet another battle, this one foggy and indistinct. With a flash of insight, he realized that this must be a vision into the future, while the other ones were past events. He only managed the number of combatants – twenty-four – before this last sight faded into the lonely and much more real wasteland.

He continued to stare for a moment in shock. _What was that? Why did I see it? Did all that really happen, or was I just hallucinating?_

Shaking it off with a sigh, Terra reminded himself that he had much more important things to do – like finding Aqua and Ven. They, especially Aqua, might know what was going on. Maybe they would know where the Master was too. Memories of him had surfaced easily, much more easily than he had expected.

The troubled man started to walk up again.

**. . .**

Terra had reached the end of the path when the back of his neck tingled, and he had a very strong sensation of being watched. Keyblade appearing once again, he spun around and pointed the weapon at –

"Hmph. I guess I'm not surprised. But really? No warm welcome?"

That sarcastic voice. It had the ring of familiarity. But...

"What, you can't get it through that thick skull of yours?" The helmeted figure sighed and shook his covered face slowly, arms crossed and leaning against one of the cliff wall's protrusions. His strange-looking monochrome suit was a dominant black, although there were also white markings on his chest and his boots were mainly white. The figure's helmet also had a symbol on it that covered most of the visor.

Terra thought he recognized it, but he couldn't be sure.

"Stop staring at me," the stranger said, irritated. "I might look a bit different, but _you_ drawing a blank? This is priceless." He didn't look anywhere close to laughing – as far as Terra could tell anyway, with a hidden face.

"Who are you?" he asked with a frown.

The stranger's gloved hand twitched as if moving to slap his face before realizing that he wore a helmet. "Ugh. Just what am I supposed to say? 'Hey, I'm a remnant of your arch-enemy because your friend fucking destroyed him over ten years ago?' Does that work?"

Terra narrowed his eyes at him. "Sounds pretty ridiculous to me. Have you been following me?" _Blunt and to the point, Aqua always used to say. Blunt and obviously not sharp, Ventus used to joke._

"From almost the very beginning," he replied. "You just walked past, armor back on your shoulder instead of kneeling on the ground like an idiot, so I had to follow. First of all, it was hilarious to see you stumble around like you never used this place as a personal battlefield, and second..." The helmeted person paused and Terra got the sense that he was frowning. "Well, it means change. I've been sitting around for over ten years, like I said. It gets boring, even in a dormant state."

A few of his words finally sunk into his head. "Wait. Over ten years? I've been gone for over ten years?"

"Have you not been listening to me?" The stranger's voice seemed to always sound irritated, now that Terra thought about it. "That's basically what I just said. For goodness' sake, is your brain even working?"

"Of course it is," Terra snapped back. "It's the memories that I've lost."

There was a moment of silence from the dark stranger before his shoulders began to shake from the sheer amount of cackling laughter emanating from the opaque helmet. "You have to be kidding me. Wait, you're not! No, no, don't tell me. The old Master screwed you over _again_ and he wasn't even here. If only it wasn't on purpose – that would be even more hilarious. But I served under him, and I know he plans for everything – that decrepit, old chessmaster. Oh, this is too good."

Terra scowled at the joy the stranger seemed to take from this knowledge. Not to mention that this stranger knew more about his life than he himself. "Just shut up and tell me your name already," he said harshly.

_Not what you were like before, _a voice in his head whispered. He ignored it.

"Oh, has the meek little Keyblade wielder finally grown a pair?" the stranger taunted. "Whatever. Not like it matters." There was a pause. "Does the name Vanitas ring a bell?"

Eyes narrowing, Terra frowned deeply. That first comment aside, it actually did, now that he thought of it. _Vanitas..._ A few chunks of it then proceeded to click together. "You're Vanitas? But how can you be here?"

"_He's_ not," 'Vanitas' muttered darkly. "I'm just a remnant of that loser, forever left behind in this boring desert, unable to leave. Believe me, I've tried. But this _thing_ –" He spat out the word like it was disgusting and summoned his black-and-white Keyblade. "– is just a fake. It can't transform, it can't unlock things, all it can do it appear and disappear and be a weapon for battling any nonexistent tourists. Useless." Vanitas Remnant attempted to throw it on the ground, but it only vanished with a flutter of darkness in mid-air.

"Wait, you're a Remnant?" Terra asked in shock. The mention of being an actual Remnant caused a lesson from Master Eraqus to rise to the forefront of his mind. "But Remnants – they only fight, nothing else. They're supposed to be like ghosts, forced to finish what their past selves started. How can I talk to you?"

Vanitas Remnant grunted, as if the conversation was finally getting somewhere and he was satisfied. "Finally, we're getting somewhere," he said aloud, confirming it for Terra. "Yeah, usually the talking thing doesn't work. Normally, if someone had shown their face here, I'd have beaten them in the dust, no questions asked. That would've been a compulsion – because honestly, I would rather get the fuck out of here than destroy my only chance of leaving, even if it's supposed to be impossible. But for you, right now, it's different. Because you're like me." He began to pace in front of Terra.

Terra was too busy going over this new revelation to really care about the pacing. Too much new information at too fast a pace. "Like you? How does that even make sense?"

"Hah, like a Remnant makes sense," Vanitas Remnant replied. "How am I supposed to know?" He glanced at the look on Terra's face. "Sheesh, you can't expect me to be Mr. Exposition here, can you? But I'd guess it's because of your amnesia problem." He tapped the side of his own helmet. "Like a blank slate up there. Kind of makes you a 'Remnant' of your former self, if you get what I'm saying. What was the definition of a Remnant again?"

"A ghost-like creature forced to either continue its past self's work or get revenge," Terra paraphrased, starting to understand with a kind of horrifying clarity. "It has a tendency to be aggressive, especially to the specific target of its purpose. And it's typically bound to one place."

Vanitas Remnant gave off the air of a smirk. "Ah hah, and there's your answer. Five out of six – good enough to hold a conversation with a true Remnant, apparently."

Terra followed the dark Remnant's pacing with his eyes for a few moments, silent. It was like he was determined to stuff all of it in his head at once before Terra could really understand what it meant, as if there wasn't much time left. Or maybe Vanitas had always been like this. He honestly got the impression that he had been.

"Then I guess we'll meet again in battle. Because the next time I come to visit, I won't be a remnant of my former self anymore," Terra eventually replied.

"I guess so," Vanitas Remnant responded, sounding satisfied. "Well, enjoy your soul-searching, Terra. You might just fight the real me again instead – and he won't be nearly as friendly as I've been." With that, the faceless ghost backed into a swirling miasma of darkness, disappearing into its depths. The portal then vanished.

There was silence before –

"You just always have to have the last word, don't you, Vanitas?" Terra muttered under his breath.


End file.
